Claire French

Claire is an Assistant Professor at the University of Birmingham. As a performance-maker, researcher and lecturer, she explores multilingual documentary theatre and performance. She has developed work with new migrants, the diaspora, Indigenous training actors, older actors and intercultural teams of physical theatre performers across Germany, the UK, South Africa and Australia. As a researcher, she investigates multilingual methodologies and dramaturgies that legitimise minority and low-status languages and avoid reproducing harmful views about languages. Many of her recent findings have been in concert with, and guided by, South Africans, creating new challenges for research examining decolonising approaches to global collaboration. Claire obtained her PhD from the University of Warwick, UK; MA from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, UK; and BA from Notre Dame University and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Australia. Her starting point for debate is a queer, Anglo Celtic, multilingual, standard-English speaking, Irish-Australian dual national and migrant perspective. Claire was drawn to the interdisciplinarity of Reading Decoloniality and the patience, care and sensitivity that characterises its members in conversation. Currently reading: Samuel Ravengai's The dilemma of the African body, Pip William's The Dictionary of Lost Words and training in an Alexander Technique course with Rose Whyman.